Sunday, February 6, 2011

What do the Mets owe

In the day and age everyone it seems to run a little in the red. For a couple of years with the econmy and real estate turning soft many a people have houses where what they owe and what its worth has made them in the red when it comes to equity. Well Wilpon and the Mets are no different.

The Mets might be worth 850M as per what forbes pegged them at but the entities surrounding the Mets might owe more then there worth.

The Mets themselves have a debt of 430M and last year with attendance lagging for poor play they could have lost close to 30M. The Wilpons owe 700M for the construction of Citi Field. "Under a deal structured with the city, the stadium -- controlled by a Sterling entity called Queens Ballpark Corp -- must pay $50 million in annual "payments in lieu of taxes."

The only cash cow is SNY which is generated a profit of 100M per year but The Wilpons have to divy out close to 35M for that part to other entities so they take in 65M.

Now the NY Post is mentioning that the Mets had to borrow 5M just to pay some bills. Are you kidding me? So all tallied the Wilpons have a staggering 1.5B in debt from the Met side of the ledger. This included debt from SNY,Citi Field and the Mets team itself. So even if they can get someone to take a stake in this team its not really going to help them. 200-300M might work if they can get a settlement with Picard. If they cant the amount of money they have in debt might push the Wilpons to eventually into a full sale of the team.

Now a minority owner might not look the way to go at first with all this debt. Way back in 1980 the Mets were losers and the owners couldn't make things work so Doubleday and Wilpon stepped in. Wilpon who started out with only a 5% stake eventually bought out Doubleday.

With a minority owner coining in we might see that this new blood will be the owners of the Mets someday soon. The Wilpons legacy/reign could be over before Jefffy boy gets his total meat hooks in the operations. Good.